1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for controlling replacement of terminal equipment in a building management system.
2. Description of the Related Art
A building management system is used to monitor installed apparatuses localized in a building. There are cases where a few hundred to hundreds of thousand points to be monitored according to a scale of the building. For example, statuses and alarms of the installed apparatuses, analog measured values, such as temperature or humidity, and current values, and an integrated value of electric power meters are monitored.
Such the information as exampled above is connected to terminal equipment of the building management system through a relay connection (PIO) input and output, an analog input interface or a pulse input interface of a power board or a control board, which are locally provided.
In addition, the building management system is generally replaced after the elapse of 10 to 15 years from first installed. Therefore, at the replacement of the system, the old system should be reflected with a new system, of which structure is quite different from the old system because remarkable progressed technology has been developed up to the replacement.
In addition, structures of terminal equipment or a transmission method between a center device and each terminal equipment are also quite different from those of the old system in the building management system.
When a plurality of terminal equipment are replaced in the building management system, the replacement requires switching a few hundreds or hundreds of thousand external input and output points, which are connected to the plurality of terminal equipment while continuing the operation. Therefore, the system switching takes a long period from several weeks to several months.
From such the situation, it is required that the building management system should be replaced smoothly within a relatively shorter switching period, while the operations continue, without any trouble.
When a plurality of terminal equipment are replaced in the conventional building management system, the following methods and modes are used:
First method is that all of the center device and a plurality of terminal equipment, in the building management system, are simultaneously replaced, and
Second method is that the center device and a plurality of terminal equipment are separately replaced.
In the second replacing method, only the center device is replaced to new one at first stage to connect the plural existing terminal equipment, and the plural existing terminal equipment are replaced to new equipment at the second stage.
In either of these replacing methods, it is the principle that the old building management system is switched to new one while the operation is continued. Then, the switching from old terminal equipment to new equipment takes a period from several weeks to several months, and the following switching modes are used for each method.
For the first method (Simultaneous replacing system);
As shown in FIG. 12, an existing system 10, which is still in a normal operation status, and a new system 20 is built up with a new center device 100A having a human-machine interface 202 and a processor 200, while executes application programs, such as a remote schedule program. The existing system 10, then, starts up the new system and confirms the operation thereof.
All of plural terminal equipment 201 belonging to the new system 20 are provided at the same time of providing the center device 100A of the new system 20 in advance. Alternatively, all external inputs and outputs of the existing terminal equipment 101 are switched to those of the new terminal equipment 201 while the existing terminal equipment 101 is serially switched and is replaced to the new terminal equipment 201.
When all of the new terminal equipment 201 are just switched, the existing system 10 is removed.
For the second method (separate replacing system);
First Stage: Replacing a Center Device
As shown in FIG. 13, a new center device 100A, which has a processor 200 and a human-machine interface 202, is installed. After the operation is confirmed, a destination of connecting a line of the existing terminal equipment 101 is switched from the center device 100 of the existing system 10 to the center device 100A of the new system 20. After the switching, the existing center device 100 of the existing system 10 is removed.
Second Stage: Replacing the Terminal Equipment
While the operation is executed in the center device of the new system 20, the existing terminal equipment 101 is replaced to the new terminal equipment 201.
In addition, in FIG. 13, the processor 200 is connected to the existing terminal equipment 101 through an interface 203.
As a first mode, as shown in FIG. 14, a temporal center device 100B is temporally provided for switching terminal equipment so as to connect the new terminal equipment. The existing terminal equipment 101 is subsequently switched to the new terminal equipment 201.
As a second mode, a processor 200A and an interface circuit 203A are provided in the new center device 100A of the new system 20, as shown in FIG. 15, data for new terminal equipment are installed in addition, and the existing terminal equipment 101 are subsequently switched to new terminal equipment 201.
As is apparent from the above-described explanation of FIG. 14, it is required to prepare two systems having the same scale at the same time, in the case of the separate replacing method of FIG. 14. However, the separate replacing system shown in FIG. 15 is preferable because there is no requirement to provide two same systems at the same time.
In an example shown in FIG. 14, although there is no need to perform duplicate data registration, the following problem will occur. In other words, two sets of center devices 100 and 100B should be prepared.
Further, the user should operate the two center devices 100 and 100A during the switching period according to the switching status, thus a problem occurs obstacle in using the both system.
On the other hand, although there is no need to prepare two center devices in the example shown in FIG. 15, duplicate data should be registered for both the existing terminal equipment 101 and the new terminal equipment 201.
In this case, points to be monitored and controlled or management points, which are input and output to the terminal equipment, are managed by addresses called as hard addresses, and these hard addresses must be different each for the existing terminal equipment and the new terminal equipment.
Therefore, it is required that point data must be prepared, of which attribute data, such as the name or type of the management point, is the same but only the addresses are different.
Further, since the point addresses are registered for display data or each functional data, duplicate data are prepared for the existing terminal equipments 101 and the new terminal equipment 201 in advance or the data registration should be changed according to the switching. Thus, the following problems occur:
One of the problems is that the data, such as point addresses or display data, should be registered in double, thus the capacity of memory requires double of the number of the points to be managed. Additionally, the data to be set, such as functional data, should be changed according to the switching of the terminal equipment, thus it takes much time to switch the system.
In addition, the double registered data should be properly used depending on the operation according to the switching status of the terminal equipment, thus the operation management is hindered during the switching period.